Saturday, October 26, 2013

The old “Potato Gun in the Files” trick, (and I fell for it). Or how not to do damage control after you Bosch-ed a home invasion

"Sarge, this is personal. My mother read those articles."

At 4:30 a.m. on August 6, seven heavily
armed men in full body armor busted through Audrey Hudson’s Fourth Amendment protection,
confiscated her First Amendment rights, then knocked over and damn near
destroyed her Second Amendment privileges on their way out.

Ostensibly, these officers from the Department
of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were searching for unregistered
guns and a “potato launcher” that might be in her husband’s possession, at
least that’s what the warrant said.

The warrant didn’t say anything about
seizing documents. Still, the agents confiscated confidential
notes and documents about a number of unflattering stories Hudson had written
about the Department of Homeland Security, specifically the Federal Air Marshal
Service. Hudson, you see, is an investigative journalist who reported regularly
on the sometimes illegal activities committed by the employer of the very men
who were rifling through her files … in search of a potato gun.

During the three-hour home invasion,
one of the agents, Miguel Bosch, asked Hudson if she was the same Audrey Hudson
who had written unflattering stories about the Federal Air Marshals over the
last decade. It turns out Bosch was curious because he is a former air marshal
official, himself. Small world.

In fact, it was Bosch who called
Hudson a month after the raid to tell her that she could pick up the five files
of her notes that they stole—the ones that contained the names of numerous confidential sources
who still worked at Homeland Security.

When contacted by The Daily Caller,
the DC paper that broke the story, Bosch said, “Before I talk to you, I’m
probably going to have to run this by our legal department.” No word yet if his
dry cleaner ever got that stain out of his slacks.

The Maryland State Police also
declined to comment, citing the proverbial “ongoing criminal investigation and
the potential for pending criminal charges at the state and/or federal level.” I’m
sure the police spokesman meant charges against the Hudsons, but if this story gets
legs, he may well be speaking about the thugs who conducted the raid.